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D900K
Description The Clevo D900K is a revision of Clevo's D900T, a later model introduced which changed from the D900T's original design by ditching the D900T's Intel 915 Chipset for the VIA K8T890 Northbridge, which allowed the use of AMD's new Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core processor, for true duo-CPU power. The laptop is otherwise mostly unchanged, and as a result many parts are interchangeable between the D900T and D900K laptops. Upgradeability / Notes These machines are quite outdated in terms of modern performance. You should not expect that they will run modern games and applications well. That being said their are a few things that can be done to make them perform their best while running applications and games of the 2004-2006 era. * Storage: Hard drives can be upgraded to solid state optical drives. This is a pretty substantial upgrade because it allows you to have a reasonable size paging file with very low access times compared to a hard disk drive. This can help overcome the k8t800's 2gb physical ram limit to a certain extent. You can also run the ssds in raid 0 for maximum performance. Be advised however that trim will not function properly in any situation where their is an "intelligent" controller between windows and the drive. The D900K implements first generation 1.5gbps sata. Their is no real benefit to using faster solid state drives, And some people have reported that newer drives are incompatible. Some SSD's have a jumper that can be used to limit speed to 1.5gbps. * Optical Disk Drive: I recommend the panasonic / matsushita / matshita uj-845 trayless DVD+/-RW/-RAM slot loading drives. Alternatively a significantly more expensive Panasonic UJ-220 IDE slot loading drive may be used if BD-RE functionality is desired. * Video cards: All revision D900K motherboards support up to the NVIDIA Go7950 GTX video card. These modules are pretty hard to come by these days. The Go7800 GTX being much easier to find. (Keep in mind parts for these machines are getting hard to find in general) * Power adapter: The Li Shin 20v 11a ac adapter runs cool to the touch compared to the 20v 9a version that runs very hot. ***You will need the more powerful Li Shin 20v 11a ac adapter for the 7800 and 7950 video card modules Bad things will happen if you run these cards with the 20v 9a adapter.*** * Display: The lcd panel can be swapped in favor of the 17.1" CCFL LCD with 1920x1200 WUXGA resolution panel. Just keep in mind you will also need to change the lcd video cable as the one for the 1920x1200 screen is different. You will get a repeating video output if the wrong cable is used. * WLAN: My preferred card are the gigabyte super g mpci wireless cards such as the GN-WI01GS / GN-WI01HT / GN-WI01GT because of their extended range. They can often be found in older sager versions of the Clevo D870P. * CPUs: Stick with the Athlon X2 line. People have reported very erratic behavior when using the Opteron series processors in the D900K. These earlier machines unlike their successors were not designed for workstation / server processors. It is also worth noting that AMD Powernow! is not supported on Opteron processors. Common problems No Video/No boot on power on * Symptoms: When powering on the machine, the blue power indicator around the power button remains illuminated, and maybe the hard drive indicator stays on. The disk drives make a few noises, but the laptop shows no further activity. After several attempts, the laptop may turn the fans to maximum to cool the CPU down. * Problem: A component of the laptop is malfunctioning. * Solution: Check and reseat the video card module, RAM, and CPU, and interchange with spares if possible. Remove MiniPCI modules too. Cannot detect Hard Drives * Symptoms: Hard Drives are correctly seated in the caddy and correctly installed, but Windows setup, live CD/USB OS or other Operating Systems cannot detect them. * Problem: Hard Drives are incorrectly configured in the BIOS. * Solution: Access the BIOS by pressing F2 on startup at the splash screen, then navigate to the Hard Drive settings. If you have only one Hard Drive installed, make sure that the Hard Drive mode is in AHCI, and not RAID. When installing Windows, you'll usually need a third party driver to assist in the installation, regardless of if the Hard Drives is set to AHCI or RAID in the BIOS. Artifacting/Disfigured screen text, images * Symptoms: Lines, blocks, and random colors disrupt the screen's normal picture. BIOS shows colored lines and strange, incorrect characters, and BSODs or graphics driver failure occur in Operating System along with discoloration and other anomalies. * Problem: The graphics card is overheating, or is suffering from severe hardware issues. * Solution: Shut the computer off and leave it to cool. Ensure the video card's fan (the left side of the laptop, towards the front, closest to you when using the machine) is getting proper airflow and is free of dust. If video card is consistently showing symptoms, try a different video card if available.